The forbidden words formed long queues; memoires.

The seventies were already getting very modern. You would have thought the world belonged to those wearing jeans and perms. Yes, that’s right, I too had a perm done. It was a sign of male emancipation. The journey ( and who is not on ‘journey’ now-a-days?) of freeing  the shackles of the sixties started in my case a few years earlier with a vasectomy performed by two female doctors, one of whom had the word ‘Cock’ in her surname. I remember both of them crouched down at the bottom of the bed, intent on the snapping of my vas deference.  A good omen. The perm ensured acceptance and added to confidence.  The vasectomy a discontinuation of the family who already counted three in an over-populated world. Why could the world of blond curls and untidy beards not be an outward sign for  those who owned the world?

What was not so modern though, and it seems ludicrous today, that words were still banned. Portnoy’s Complaint and Lolita were banned. The literary experts whose job it was to look after our morals and employed as Censors needed an ambulance after they had ploughed through those books. They were maimed for life. That’s what words can do. Words like ‘cunt and masturbation’, ‘breasts and erection’ and the unspeakable ‘penis’. When the books were finally released from being pent up by the tens of thousands on our wharfs in grey camouflaged wooden crates, pandemonium broke out. Police on horseback had to whip back and restrain rain-coat wearing men, blunt-stone women, all queuing up to get a copy and read all about banned words. There were no signs, as feared, of anyone going in a sexual frenzy. There were no rapports of fornication on the foot-path outside Hans delicatessen with the signs of Heisse KnackWurst for sale, or indeed inside the KFC take-away.

A few years earlier, similar horse-backed police had to restrain theatre patrons in front of the Metro in King’s Cross where after weeks of parliamentary arguments ‘Hair’ was finally allowed to be shown. Permission was given after agreements were reached whereby during the ‘nude’ part the undressing of all the actors and dancers were to be strictly performed under a large army canvas which would then be hoisted up by a crane. The nudeness had to be done in absolute stillness and no body parts moving. A single quiver in testicles or breasts and the show would be cancelled. It was an electrifying moment that we all waited for. Slowly the large canvas was lifted. The audience mouse-still. Not a flitting of an eyelash. Real nudes. Unbelievable. Afterwards, the patrons silently left the theatre, overwhelmed by it all. Many went home got undressed and looked in the mirror!

Next morning people queued up for the bus. Life seemed to go on the same as before. It always does. On week-ends the lawnmowers happily rattled on and the suburban nature strip wasn’t forgotten either. Petunias were being planted, rockeries cemented and fences re-painted.

It was always thus.

Life drawing with a fondue. (Auto-biography.)

‘Billabong’

‘Billabong’. From Wikipedia;

“The etymology of the word billabong is disputed. The word is most likely derived from the Wiradjuri term bilabaŋ, which means “a watercourse that runs only after rain” and is derived from bila, meaning “river”,^[3] and possibly bong or bung, meaning “dead”. One source, however, claims that the term is of Scottish Gaelic origin.^[6]Billabongs attained significance as they held water longer than parts of rivers and it was therefore important for people to name these areas.^“

Gaelic or aboriginal, I’ll settle for the latter and painted accordingly in the ochre, chrome yellow, sienna colouring and avoided any kilt hues. You’ll be hard pushed to see any well hung MacDonald’s quarter pounders in my Billabong.

The above painting ‘Billabong’ must have got the nod of approval by the panel of judges and was hung in the NSW Gallery in 1972. The seventies was a period, not only of vegie co-ops, baby sitting clubs and going bra-less, it was also a period of enormous cultural change in Australia..  It all started in the late sixties and had its origin in a couple of cafes around the Cross in Sydney. I think Frank Morehouse, an Australian writer, was savvy to this and even wrote a book called ‘ Days of Wine and Rage.’ Up till the late sixties, the Nescafe instant coffee was the preferred brown drink. For many years TV advertisements used to swear each cup had 43 beans of  ‘real coffee’, implying that there were coffees around that were not ‘real’, conveniently forgetting that Nescafe instant coffee is as far removed  from being real coffee than ‘tasty cheese’  is from being an honest cheese. Most readers of this blog would know my stand on ‘tasty cheese’!

Towards the end of the sixties a coffee lounge opened up named ‘Reggios’ at the corner of Crown street and near Chapel Street, Sydney. Not only was it one of the first ‘real’ coffee lounges to open, it was also selling the best coffee in town and it was ‘real’ coffee percolated from ‘real’ beans. Reggio’s was frequented by a lot of Italians. Many were migrants from boats such as Roma and Sydney. Most were single. If one looked carefully it was noticed that many looked somewhat doe- eyed. The tragedy of a shortage of available women was expressed in their eyes after they  lifted their faces from the  empty coffee cups and looked into mine. I understood their plight.

A few girls of the night soon cottoned onto this Mediterranean loneliness and for a modest sum would allow some relief to the forlorn of Messina or Napoli. It wasn’t the kind of love those men sought but it was better than nothing. The coffee afterwards helped. But it was a love so bitter and not helped by the dusty train journey home afterwards to their even lonelier suburb.

Soon more coffee lounges followed. Today it has become a mile long stretch of coffee lounges and cafés, catering for the well-heeled,  the property developers, the gangsters, toy boys and their  well coiffured owners. All now are sitting under the striped awnings together with their barristers or  Labor Ministers. All are wildly gesticulating and doing their sipping. Of course there is so much more to coffee now. There is a bewilderingly long list of different coffees available. It frightens me, as I have long ago given up in remembering the latest of this or that. We still ask for a simple ‘latte’. Does anyone in our age group ask for a macchiato coffee? I doubt it. What is it?

Our daughters ‘Susanna and Natasha in Finland. Nr 3 and 4 on the right.

In between running a business we also found time to do life drawing and have fondue parties. The fondue set would come down from the top cupboard and with the help of a little dish with methylated spirits we would cook bits of raw meat in a container with oil which was heated by the metho. The meat was held at the end of steel prongs. The fad lasted for a few years together with exercise bikes. I noticed there has been an upsurge of exercise machinery. Some look as if they are ready to go on an outer space journey. So massive,  I wonder if they can double as a diesel truck or prime mover or a good lathe? Would it not be better to go for a walk or has that become too dangerous with perverts stalking the streets?

In any case, society had progressed and nothing was not tried and experimented with. It came about that some would eagerly strip off for a spontaneous life drawing session all inside our Gertrude cottage. Of course, that is finished. Can one imagine the horror of stripping off now. There would be a stampede out of Gertrude’s cottage or a call to the police, even an ambulance!.

Those were the days.

Children, tripping over and business. ( Auto-biography)

The flooded creek

After we settled in King’s Cross there was a flurry of marriages in the Oosterman clan. My friend Bernard married a Japanese girl and went to live in Japan. I continued with the painting business on my own.  One of my brothers married a girl from Russia but born in Peru, another from Polish background, my sister married a man born in Germany with just one who married an Australian. I of course married a lovely Finn. Apart from my brother who married an Aussie and has died since, we all are still married to our first love.

They were busy times all racing to get home and hearth together as well as bonnie babies. There were nappies and the smell of them. Toys on the floor. A variety of bassinettes and other bouncing contraptions that we would easily trip over.  They were the years when tripping over was normal and totally safe. Of course now a fall could easily result in an ambulance racing over to lift you on a stretcher and to a hospital, nurse putting on the gloves and a worried doctor looking you over. I haven’t as yet reached that stage yet, but it will come about!  Helvi urges me to take a firm hold of the handrail coming down from the computer upstairs. It pays to be careful! I sometimes wish that recklessness could continue. It was such a part of being young. Reckless and foolish. Now we play it safe and pretend to be wise, but really just give in to ageing, play it secure, getting old, sip our coffee and remind each other to take medicine. We have learnt our lesson.

It seems odd that when we were young and had a life ahead, we were reckless, took our chances when at the same time so much was at stake. One fatal mistake could easily result in having to pay for it over the rest of your natural life. Yet, now that we (I am) are old and with our lives more behind than in front we have far more solid reasons to be reckless. Throw caution to the wind. What is there to lose? What is holding us back?  Do a bungy jump or fight a crocodile, live in Bali or Amsterdam. We might just, with luck,  squeeze in a couple of years more or so. Of course many of the old do amazing things still, but by and large we have become more cautious and play it safe. I never ever thought I would reach that stage. Yet it is has come about.  Even so, we still have no insurance of any kind except third party property car insurance which I suppose is proof of some lingering recklessness. harking back to youthful risk taking.  I mean, does one not get buried without having any money.  Does it matter? Mozart got buried in a pauper’s grave. Perhaps, that is just bundied about to encourage budding composers to keep on trying, regardless of fame or fortune.

But going back (to those years of recklessness),  and having settled down it came about that families were sprouting up all over the place. Our first was born within a couple of years after arrival in Sydney. Our second daughter two years after that, delivered by the same doctor named Holt. I renewed previous contacts and gained quickly new jobs. Some years later, I won some really substantial contracts including the painting of the extensions to the NSW Art Gallery and the International Flight kitchen at Sydney’s airport. I tried as well to keep on with painting pictures and even had, optimistically, bought a huge  fifty metres by two metres roll of raw cotton canvas together with varied sizes of stretchers on which to span and make canvasses ready to paint.

I was an optimist and Helvi the supporting wife and mother…They were very good years,

many good years were yet to come.

Life at ” The Cross.” (Auto-biography)

Fountain at King’s Cross

Our move to Sydney’s Kings Cross was decided the next day. It needed no considering really. We walked around the main shopping street, looked at the apartment of Kanimbla-Hall which Helvi really liked. She has always been able to see the potential in any of our homes. Perhaps that sense of good proportions and making the best of any given space as well as this undefined art of recognizing what makes things look good or awfully ugly. It seems to be the domain of a Finn. Perhaps it is also a genetic thing.  I don’t think you can teach good design if the eye for the visual is absent nor make a good writer by teaching cobbling  words together when they enter a brain better equipped for understanding Rock-a-Billy or galloping horses . The idea that we are all capable of doing amazing things if only given the encouragement together with being diligent enough and have the determination to succeed, might be over-rated. We do the best we can and the philosophy ‘and may the devil take the hindmost’ always a good thing to keep in mind. Just in case! (“or Love Lies a-Bleeding, 1611:)”  Does it really matter? It is in the doing and we can all do, surely?

In the mid sixties, Sydney did have a few areas where multi- culture and a cosmopolitan life existed. Now of course almost everything has ‘a life style’, even buying a house or an electric knife sharpener, is imbued by its promise to ‘add’ to your lifestyle. The advertising world has managed to make us all fear in missing out on the promised land of the magic lifestyle and have hordes of people rushing to Harvey Norman and those Meccas of consuming, the shopping Malls. It is all proof on how we are goaded into leading our lives never quite fulfilled of having attained this desired ‘lifestyle’, while sinking somewhat deflated into our latest acquisition, the reclining sofa, while watching Neighbours on a three metre barking mad wide flat screen TV. It resists all our efforts, no matter how we shop till we drop and of course ‘drop’ we finally do. The ultimate ‘life-style’ finally achieved with ashes to ashes!

Kings Cross was the very heart of what life is capable of throwing up. There were artists, vagabonds, drug addicts, criminals and smiling red rouged but lovely prostitutes, mothers with babies in prams and some normal fathers.  It was a friendly and safe place then. Perhaps still is! It had book shops, and a great butcher shop  named ‘Hans Fleischmeister’ that sold continentals, including rookworst, sauerkraut, and marinated olives as well as prosciutto, preserved red cabbage and cooking apple in Hak glass containers and other strange and twisted looking delicatessen. On a Saturday morning the queue spilled over onto the pavement and the smell of this shop lured many to venture out of the apartment blocks like the town-crier of earlier times.

There were also nightclubs and strip joints, spruikers and American soldiers on RI leave from Vietnam or from wars somewhere. Many looked for romance but compromised with a hurried love for sale. We knew by sight some of the girls who scored a trick and nodded us with a smile. We were part of a world that still walked the pavements. A blushing fountain depicting a dandelion flower seed head was the very centre of our chosen domain and such a vibrant area to live in. It was surrounded by seats on which the book reading pensioners of the time could be seen reading or nodding. Sometimes both. The library and Franklyn supermarket were edged on this lovely little park. It was to be our home for a few years. Both of our daughters were born in Kings Cross and lived at our apartment.

Helvi transformed the apartment by lifting the ‘wall-to-wall’ under which we found a perfect hardwood floor which we partially covered with a rug. One of my paintings was hung on the wall together with a Finnish wallhanging- a wedding present-now hanging in our present home. We also replaced the crockery with the Finnish Arabia brand and bought a very nice set of cutlery in a wooden box made in Austria. The Bakelite radio and laminated kitchen table and bed-head replaced with  nicer looking accoutrements. We bought a black and white small TV and watched ‘Pick-a Box’ with Bob Dyer and an excruciatingly irritating  wife with the name ‘Dolly’ who would come on-stage to drool ‘Oh yes Bob’ in a strong  accent, over and over again whenever she was beckoned by Bob. There was a world champion contest between the world’s best factual informed with also the most and best of the retentive memories at call on this Pick a Box. It was between an Australian named Barry Jones and a Finn. Barry Jones won and became a politician later on in life, which shows you how pure knowledge can be a bad thing.

These were our Kanimbla Hall years. Very good years they were too!

“Kanimbla Hall”, Pott’s Point, Sydney.(Auto Biography)

Kanimbla Hall, Kings Cross.

Little needs adding to the previous story of how we finally ended up on a boat to Australia, sailing first class, dining with an Italian couple and Helvi dancing with the captain. Perhaps I should add as a minor detail that I also won the ship’s chess competition with the final match being played with the ship’s doctor who was supposed to be a very good player. Boasting a bit here, but one might be forgiven. One should never resist the temptation to live off minor triumphs in life as much as possible. You just never know what tragedy might be waiting around the corner!

One other memory just bubbling up right now was the teaching of English to some of the Greek migrants on the boat. There was an Australian immigration officer on-board asking for volunteers teaching English. Helvi suggested I should offer to do just that. I was given a class of Greek people mostly men but also a few young couples. All were eager and keen. I have never met a more joyfully optimistic mob of Greek people. The teaching was simple. I knew no Greek and they no English. It was done by pointing and writing. There is a name for this type of teaching, but I can’t bother looking it up. Time is of the essence, and what is in a name?

I started narcissistically pointing to myself and at the same time saying ‘Gerard’ which was followed by everyone saying their names as well. This then became ‘my name is…followed by the whole class repeating it. The fun really started when progressing to trades, and jobs. Hammering down became a carpenter. Slapping around with a brush, a painter, and so. It turned out many of the men were all of the trades, They were all cobblers, butchers, you name the trade and the same hands would fly up.. This was cause for great hilarity. Talk about a keen lot of people. No wonder so many became successful in Australia.

One could ask why did they chose to leave a country that millions flock to each year, especially with a population so given to spontaneous dance, laughter and happiness?  I noticed the same with the Italians. Of course, grinding poverty and unemployment endemic in many Southern Europe countries could be the answer. Even so, there did not seem to be that same expression of cheer and good humour in countries where far better material conditions did exist. Has anyone ever caught public transport in the UK? Those grim faces holding onto their umbrellas as if a stolen stash of gold !

In Greece during the boat trip.

I reflected how within a few weeks those happy Greeks would be drawn to working, saving, and enjoying their new life. Now there would be unlimited plates laden with fetta, lamb and spinach. No shortage for the kids and….own house, even own business, a milk bar called Stavros with photos being sent back to the relatives in Greece. Did the boisterous laughter continue in Australia as then still on the ship? Leave the pensive reflections well alone ‘my name is gerard’. What are you hoping for?

We arrived in Fremantle. Of course on yet another Sunday. We sauntered through the hot lonely barren streets. It was my third Sunday in Fremantle. Not much had changed. The continuation to Melbourne was through The Great Australian Bite.  The enormous swell parallel with the boat made even the crew not turn up for meals, let alone the passengers. There were paper bags strung up along the corridors and stairs. Sea sickness is a cruel part of any sea voyage. Even though most passenger boats have stabilisers fitted, they were of little use. Most remained in their cabins, heaving, retching merrily away in private.

Of course, Helvi and I were exempted from all this misery. Proudly arm in arm we would pace the decks. Our faces into the fierce wind. Nonchalantly defiant to Zeus and Poseidon. No sea too rough no woman (or man) so tough! The dining rooms all but for a hardy few, deserted. Tables fastened and piano roped down in the corner. Those few passengers that did turn up ate out of plates that had been put on plastic sheets to give traction, prevent them from sliding about. We ordered bacon and eggs to the pale looking waiter. The Italians absent as was the captain.

After Melbourne, a more normal city and then …Sydney. That beautiful glide through the heads and then to the Opera House in full progress, cranes sticking up as if waving to the newcomers. Finally arriving at my parents place. They immediately liked Helvi. My mother thought we would live in the garage for a while. She had put up cheerful new curtains, a red and white checked cotton strung along the top of the louvered windows, facing the street. We slept there just one night. Next day went to the city including my little apartment in Kings-Cross or Pott’s Point. It had become vacant just before our departure from Finland. Helvi immediately liked it and we decided to live there instead. It was fully furnished, even had all the pots and pans, cutlery and fridge. Even its name ‘Kanimbla Hall’ seemed attractive. It was really a bit of a no choice. I mean, the no-ones land of the suburb, neither country-side nor city. The choice was for city.

We moved in next day. It was so exciting.

The lead (run) up to marriage. (Auto-biography).

 

Boiling the ‘billy’ at Ankeriasjarvi at -20c

 

The words have been lean  lately. The school holidays are the bane of and blame for, lack of words flowing. I am too much of a me, and more of a me person,  to try to put down words under difficult circumstances. Multitasking falls to those who are unselfish and can spread goodness and sweetness around no matter what.. They even do it better. I forego flowing words in order to make pancakes or fry speck for the kids. It could just be an excuse to take a break. Regroup! I am not a multi-tasker. Ask my wife!

Do words not deserve a holiday? I mean you can tell words are suffering when you hear people say ‘awesome’ and even ‘absolutely’. Just now I heard on the news, something needing ‘a paradigm shift in attitude’. The popularity of ‘stuff like that’ is on the wane. Thanks to our PM, T. Abbott though, there has been a resurgence of ‘absolutely’ and making things ‘crystal clear’!  Saying ‘obviously’ twice in each new sentence is now being patented by Tony Abbott our Rhodes scholarly Prime Minister of funny sayings, absolutely!

The school holidays usually involves both good and bad. The good is self-evident. To have domestic life with sound of children. Pillows on the floor. Tripping over shoes that somehow find themselves in front of your step no matter what direction you take to the kitchen or bathroom. Despite of shoes, it was  fine to have them around again for a few days. They are a font of delightful expressions which any writer would use and exploit. They are both still verbally agile and imaginative like most children are. I pray they keep this and not allow it to be knocked out by maturing into stiff and compliant adults. You know the kind who feel that the ability to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ is enough to get you through. May be! But a good ‘fuck you’ and ‘piss off’ to bullying adults might stand them in just as good a stead. What is in a word? A lot!

As the painting contracting got more and more colourful, with  teams working all over Sydney, the post Italy period was put to good use.  I bought an apartment in King’s Cross. I did not actually live in it. I let it out and used the rent to pay the mortgage. It proved to be the most prudent move of my life. I also continued on with painting pictures. I had taken a painting course locally in Parramatta. This was the suburb some years before where I used to meet fortnightly as secretary of the  ‘Parramatta scooter club.’  Readers that held on to my blog would know this club disintegrated when Vespas and Lambrettas did not see eye to eye. There was even someone with a Norton 500 cc single cylinder motor bike allowed to join up.

The painting course was run by Ronald Peters, a man who abhorred what was going on at the NSW art gallery. Modern paintings were being hung and crowds would peer at them incomprehensibly. They did not make any sense to him either. He warned us to avoid modern paintings like the plague. He taught me to start with sky; ‘a dark blue at the top of the canvas and lighten the colour as you go down’ he said. ‘It will create distance.’ Gum trees always featured. ‘Put some dappled highlights on the bark’. We were urged to follow  his own painting at the front of the class. Step by step! It was the period when D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s lover was still banned and Portnoys complaint whispered about on corners by men wearing rain-coats, some years later. Today, publishers are wringing their hands. Readers are secretly and under the blankets, reading words on kindle, freeloading, copying and swapping!

Book shops now are closing down. Readers are becoming sparse and Borders have shut shop. Celebrity and sport books are still being sold and some bookshops are offering three books for the price of two. I see the smiling open mouthed Jamie Oliver still staring out at Super Markets, but for how much longer? After all those years do people still need to know how to cook a T-bone? Milan Kundera, who heard of him? A cricketer was killed by a ball some weeks back and his wife was offered a state funeral!  No such offer for Patrick White though some years ago.

I gave the landscape class a miss even though I was surprised how nice my pictures looked. The dappled effect on eucalypt bark very much liked. Some of those little paintings I took with me in a suitcase on my way to  Helvi’s Finland. For a few months I did an art course with John Olson and Robert Klippel. Both were at the revolutionary edge of breaking away from the traditional art scene in Australia. Their work created heated scenes at art galleries with people trying to take them to court. Clashes of traditional art lovers with the young and anti Vietnam war protesters. A portrait by Dobell was taken to court on the grounds it was a caricature. The artist won.

 

the rented cottage at Ankeriasjarvi.

Our letter writing to and from Finland increased and not just in numbers. Exchanges of photos and sweet whisperings became intensely loving. The tyranny of distance could only be overcome by a boat journey. Helvi still needed to do a few more exams but I proposed anyway, and…she accepted. How glorious! I remember it well. Exultation followed by booking a boat to Genoa in 1965.

The Safari suit.

Balmain cottage downstairs room

We are now going back to a period when our children numbered just two. It was a long time ago. We were living in our second house on Sydney’s Balmain harbour peninsula after having lived in a 1 bedroom apartment in a somewhat  bohemian area called Pott’s Point which is next or part of Kings Cross, Sydney. It was an area of artists, crooks,  prostitutes with sandaled souteneurs, and priests. There were also many delicatessen where one could buy real coffee , prosciutto, cheeses not named ‘tasty’ and books. If I remember correctly there was also special dispensation given to some  Euro-continental shops allowing to stay open after 6pm. It was still frowned upon as decadent by some who tried desperate to uphold decent ‘peace and quiet’ Anglo closed up traditions. This all during the  sixties when our marriage was so young, sprightly and sprouting  first babies.

The one bedroom apartment was soon crowded out with birth of our second daughter. We bought a very old and rickety weather board cottage that just had one large sitting-kitchen-dining-bathroom downstairs and two small bedrooms upstairs. The downstairs would  originally have had rooms but the previous architect owner had taken all walls out leaving just one spacious room that looked out over a glorious and vibrant harbour. In those day it was always sunny.

That the bathroom was part of our sitting area could not have worried architect nor did it us. In the middle of this room was a round wood burning cast- iron heater with the name ‘Broadway’ on it. It was  lined with stone on the inside and as chimney had a large galvanised pipe going through the ceiling and upstairs bedrooms ending finally through both levels  on top of the roof. It was capped by a china- man’s hat to keep out rain.  It heated the whole house during winter with cut up old wooden rail sleepers.The cottage had a waxed wooden floor downstairs and upstairs I painted the floors white. This was a typical workman’s cottage that might have housed some years back, a family with three or four children with a husband who could well have been employed in the stevedoring industry. He might  have smelled of tar, salt and rope each time he arrived home with his wife making tea and his children playing outside.

The harbour in front of this cottage was less than 100 metres away and always busy with towing of large boats of which the house would vibrate each time the propellers reversed. We made own furniture and made do with little.  Milk came in glass bottles and bread by baker doing the rounds announced by barking dogs. Even roosters were still around. We could afford the luxury of a nappy service and had a second hand washing machine of which the only drawback was that the pump had packed it up.  No worries, we sucked on the hose to get the gravity of flow going and let it run into our court yard. That is how it was. Not anymore now.

And at Christmas we had parties and fondues with friends and family sitting on planks suspended between paint drums while listening to the Beatles’ Sargent Pepper or Peter, Paul & Mary  thumping out from home made giant speaker boxes with 12 inch woofers, tweeters and cross-overs. Did we not also drink cheap headache wine squeezed out of bladders but yet into nice fluted glasses?. We would meet and compare the tie dyes. Wives sometimes dressed in pantsuits, men with hair the longer the better,  jeans dangerously flared. The enormous shoulder pads were yet to come, waiting in the wings.  They were the best years but aren’t all years of past the best?

In Athens

During that time when things had settled and some money coming in Helvi decided to visit her family in Finland taking our two young children with her. Our youngest daughter would be carried in a papoose while her sister was old enough to walk at airports  during change- overs while helpful in carrying her own little bag. It was quite a trip from Sydney with another plane to catch in Finland to the closest airport where her family lived. Finland is a huge country,  greater than the UK.

It  was going to be a six weeks holiday and I would be on my own. I could hardly wait for their return but had to do with receiving letters for the time being and the rare phone call. It was a lonely time and I missed my family.

It is then I made a choice that till this day I am still haunted, remembered and reminded of. I bought a wine-red knitted Safari suit. It had flared pants and a double breasted jacket held together with brass gold buttons and a belt of same material above my hips but below armpits with large gold coloured ostentatious looking  buckle. The pants were held up with its own wine red belt made of same knitted material.I also bought  something resembling shoes that were from Egypt and made of rope that was coiled around the toe  and heel  part above the sole with in between the rope arrangement  a  cream leather-like material and  a buckle on top. I completed the whole outfit with a modest gold chain worn unobtrusively but magnificently opulent, around my neck.  My idea was to look a new man or at least a reborn man.  A proud prince of unsurpassed passion and vibrant vitality. I wanted to impress my Helvi. I looked of course a one hit pop star failure, but at the time wasn’t aware of this, blinded as usual by foolish folly.

Finland, just married.

I went to the airport on the day of my family’s return to Sydney. All good things come to an end. As my little family passed through customs and into the  arrival hall I spotted them first. The look on my wife’s face was of utter disbelief soon followed by a scowling disapproval. ‘What are you wearing now?’ she said. My daughters too looked frightened. Of course we drove home all excited to be together again but Helvi kept on looking at my suit and shaking her head. I never wore the suit again nor ever shopped for clothes without Helvi having an input. I am fashion blind.

The shoes went into the slow combustion Broadway.

Salami

Todays word that came to mind on wakening was ‘salami’.

With my conversion back to white bread from whole-meal, it brought back memories from way back. My mother making sandwiches for my three brothers and one sister going to school in Australia. It was part of the ‘New Country’ that schoolkids did not come home for lunch as schoolkids did and still do back in Holland. Instead they would stay at school and have a lunch made by mothers. Sometimes, but rarely by fathers. My dad never made a single sandwich but did excel in pancakes with golden syrup.

Of course in the heat of summers and in mid flight, the opening of hundreds of lunch boxes simultaneously, created a stench that over the years impregnated the class rooms, the walls and indeed, the whole building. I can walk-by any school today and get an instant re-call of banana sandwiches, spaghetti sandwiches and the essence of any lunch box; Devon with tomato sauce. It is now thought that the Devon sandwich with tomato sauce started school bullying. In England the Devon was called luncheon meat or Spam.

My mother was at her wit’s end trying to find interesting filling for my brothers’ and sister’s sandwiches. Australia was very sunny and very spacious but as far as sandwich fillings, back in the fifties and sixties, it was a dark unforgiving place. I mean, I can still taste the tinned spaghetti with Tom. sauce sandwich. Is it of any wonder that failure followed so many that went to school?

Till the late eighties and at social adult gatherings, it was the pickled gherkin surrounded by Devon or in some rare cases ham, pierced by a toothpick’ that would brake the ice and get things rocketing and moving. Men with beer around the barbeque and the girls in the kitchen. If a man dared to move to the kitchen he was suspected of being a bit of a poofter.

It was left to the genius of Barry Humphries of the Edna Average fame to make this famous quote of someone quietly farting on entering the lift on the ground floor filling up with lawyers of Madigan and Madigan Ltd (solicitors and family lawyers) suffering all the way up to the 26th floor;… “Who opened their lunch box?”

It was some years after that Italian salami, prosciutto and non plastic cheese came to the shelves at David Jones delicatessen, soon followed by olives, real coffee and anchovies. I remember the advertisements on TV ’43 beans of coffee in every Nescafe instant coffee. In the late seventies coffee lounges opened up in Kings Cross and garlic made its entrance. It was a true revolution.

Look at me now.

Gertrude’s Cottage

Hopefully I am not overburdening the dear readers with too much detail on our lives. I am sure that everyone has just as much fascinating memories about their pasts. I also assume that reflection on what has been is a nice way of whiling the time away. So, unless your lives are busy to the extend you are about to close the door and rush off to catch the 401 bus to the office, bear with me. Here is the tale of Gertrude’s Cottage.

This was the front of the cottage entered from the street behind a huge 10ft timber unscaleable fence.

Our first daughter was born in 1968. We were living in a small one bedroom apartment in Pott’s Point in inner Sydney. Things were idyllic and love was flourishing as it always does in newly joined couples. I am talking about that first flush which, like the white water rapids of a brooking river eventually flows into much calmer waters. It did not take long when our second child was on the way. We needed more space.

My decorating business was flourishing. We were living well but frugally, saving some money. As more space was needed I started scanning the newspapers. |We had also read somewhere that Balmain was becoming popular with students and artists. Potts Point was a rather bohemian place being near King’s Cross with its mixture of prostitutes, European delicatessen, artists and crooks, we looked for similar places to live. Crooks were still rife in Balmain!

A year or so before I worked on a large block of home-units in East Balmain. As I was sitting on the stone wall surrounding the three storey building overlooking the harbour I noticed across the road lower down a delightful old rickety timber cottage with a block of derelict land next to it. Some blond girls were playing. There were three billy goats tethered on stakes eating the weeds. I thought then that the situation with the sparkling water was so lovely. Did I have a premonition that we eventually would live in that very place?

This was the back of the house facing the Harbour and part of the bridge. Fabulous!

A couple of years later while reading the real estate section I happen to read a cottage offered for sale. It advertised itself as overlooking the harbour in Balmain. It included three goats. The price was $12,500.-. I could hardly contain myself. I never really thought much about that very American based bit of psychology, that if you think long and hard enough about what you want, you will always get it. Or, alternatively, your dreams will come true as long as you work towards it. The world is full of those that dream of riches and fame but still end up living impoverished and utterly forgotten having worked the fingers to the bone.

After having read the advertisement, I hopped in the old Ford zephyr ute. I drove to the front of that dear little cottage and it was the one I had seen previously. It was called ‘Gertrude’s cottage.’ It had just the right feel about it. We bought it after a very sceptic bank manager warned us against buying it. ‘It is just an old shed’, he said. It would have been in 1970. Our second daughter was born prior to us moving into our first ‘home’.
Was it luck or did my premonition before came true?

Those were the Days my Love

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You thought it would never end, but while it might still be some years away; end it will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg

I remember those first memories as if it was yesterday. That of holding my mother’s hand, except it wasn’t mum but a strange lady in the soup kitchen of Rotterdam 1944.  In the confusion of many mums and many children with metal buckets waiting to be filled, I had taken a mum’s hand which wasn’t my mother’s. This was my first moment of total panic and of freaking out.  It was resolved within seconds but the forgetting of this, never. How odd, that links to mothers are so important that the comfort of holding a hand can leave such lasting impressions. I mean, I was holding someone’s hand and it was only when looking upwards I became aware of the hand not being my mother’s. So what was the big deal? Perhaps during those war years with cold winters and gnawing hunger, filling buckets with soup was the primary concern by mothers with skinny children. I am sure my mother hadn’t deliberately let go of her skinny son’s hand. The metal bucket that my mother carried was green as was the little kerosene cooking stove that she used to prime by pumping. It was my right hand that my mother had let go off.

The years rushed by and then we married, we had our first, our second, our third child…. Vasectomy…. Enough now of pro-creation. Dr.Barbara Simcock of the Australian Family Planning Association performed the operation. ‘Make sure you keep using condoms for at least the next 6 weeks,” was her sage advice.  Here take some, they are multi coloured and they glow in the dark, she added before tending to the next man who I had briefly met in the waiting room. He had a beard and looked a bit anxious and pale, but he also had four children. Then after six weeks I had to take a sample to the ‘semen expert’ who would try and detect if any life ones survived since the operation and the use of those coloured condoms (glowing under the bed sheets). The butcher who had watched a channel 9 TV segment on my vasectomy said triumphantly;” I saw you on the Telly yesterday, you had it cut off”, ha-ha ha…” Your usual two kilo of sausages?”

Those were the days, forever and for more. Those were also the days of the tribal rock musical ‘Hair’ with its’ Age of Aquarius’ with long hair and tentative first bong trials and errors. We rolled the bong and felt real ‘with it’ especially after having, for the first time ‘ever’ in public, seen the lineup of nudes at the Hair musical at Kings Cross theatre. The first display of pubic hair IN PUBLIC!  It had trouble getting through the sensors. One condition of allowing the nudity was that the actors were to stand frozen. Nothing would be allowed to move or dangle. Police on horse-back with batons drawn were outside the theatre.  Any body part moving and hell would break out. The actors were also not allowed to undress on the stage. The problem was resolved by the actors getting undressed under a huge canvas sheet. When the moment arrived that the whole audience had waited for, (with baited breath) you could hear a pin drop. The canvas sheet would be hoisted up, et voila, real live nudes. Standing, in situ, like a set from Madame Tussauds Wax museum. Eroticism came in modest form during those times.

The show was hugely popular and went on even longer than ‘The Sound of Music,’ which was not quite as erotic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9oq_IskRIg